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Not every city is a fan of innovation.

Jared Meyer, senior research fellow at the Foundation for Government Accountability and author of How Progressive Cities Fight Innovation, has conducted extensive national research on the impact of government regulation of innovative services.

Discussing the results of his studies, Meyer tells OneNewsNow the map is "all over the place" in terms of regulations on Uber and Airbnb.

Uber, launched in 2009,competes with cab companies by offering rides arranged by private drivers.Airbnb is an online room rental service that began in 2008.

Some cities completely outlaw renting out part of your home or apartment on Airbnb, and others enthusiastically embrace ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft, explains Meyer. So it really depends on the city, and youre going to get tons of different regulations depending on where youre looking in the country.

Meyer says this inconsistent regulation is not happening only in progressive cities located in blue states.

For example, he recounts that in 2015 Nashville bowed to pressure from special interests in the hotel industry and organized labor by passing an ordinance that restricted residents freedom to rent out their homes.

Some states, meanwhile, have passed or are considering legislation to prevent cities from enacting restrictions that frown on new online services connecting buyers and sellers i.e., the sharing economy.

The sharing economy is something that Progressives should embrace, never mind that its just embracing changes in technology, continues Meyer. But what weve seen is that over the past few years, the battle lines have been drawn where we have proudly progressive mayors and city council members fighting back against these services, rather than wholeheartedly embracing them.

For too long, Meyer says, cities established policies that effectively created government monopolies on certain services, specifically with for-hire vehicles.

Concerning his study of such government monopolies, Meyer says private, for-hire transportation became a "luxury" enjoyed only by the wealthy.

Now, because Uber and Lyft were able to go around these decades-old antiquated regulations," says the researcher, "they brought that service truly to the 99 percent. So I would hope that if they went under, we would have a new competitor step in that would be able to serve even more people effectively and affordably.

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When innovation meets Progressives and pressure - OneNewsNow

A catastrophe is unfolding just south of the Wisconsin border. Illinois is going bankrupt.

The state has over $140 billion in unpaid debts and future pension benefit obligations without the resources to pay these obligations. It is so bad that Powerball is pulling out of Illinois because the state can't afford to pay the winners.

How did Illinois get in this fix? The answer is progressive politics and initiatives. For over 50 years Illinois has been run by progressives with their tax-and-spend philosophy. It hasn't worked. You cannot endlessly promise more and more benefits and programs without a means to pay for them and borrowing to cover the shortfall.

This is what progressives want for America and in many cases what we already have. In the near future, Illinois might default, or be forced to implement massive tax increases, and that won't be enough to protect the pensions of public employees across the state or pay all the bills.

So when people wax poetically about the wonderful nature of progressive ideology, just think about Illinois and you will see the terrible problems it brings.

Joseph Tripalin, McFarland

Originally posted here:
Progressive politics led to Illinois' plight -- Joseph Tripalin - Madison.com

This article originally appeared on AlterNet.

The political battle to stop the GOP-led Congress from destroying healthcare safety nets via House and Senate bills to dismantle Obamacare and shrink Medicaid jumped into a new orbit Wednesday, as the Senate Majority Leader said he would keep revising the legislation and numerous pro-healthcare groups stepped up their protests.

On Tuesday, Mitch McConnell announced he did not have enough votes to pass his healthcare-cutting bill before the upcoming long July 4 holiday recess. While McConnell said on Wednesday that he hoped to have a revised bill before the weekend, his failure to get 50 out of 52 Republican senators to go along prompted progressives and Democrats to launch a new wave of protests, phone-banking, letter-writing and other efforts targeting Republicans in 10 states before Congress reconvenes in mid-July.

These efforts come as new polls find that only 12 percent of the public supports the Senate Republicans healthcare plan. A 53% majority say Congress should either leave the law known as Obamacare alone or work to fix its problems while keeping its framework intact, the USA Today/Suffolk University poll said.

By midday Wednesday, protests had begun. Outside the Capitol, NARAL Pro-Choice America held a rally attended by several Democratic senators and Vermont Independent Bernie Sanders. Meanwhile, on the opposite side of the country, Progressive Democrats of America activists hovered in the Phoenix and Tuscon offices of Arizona Republican Sen. Jeff Flake, where they held signs saying, Healthcare is a Right, Medicare for All, and wore hats saying, Single-payer now.

Flake is among a handful of GOP senators who have not endorsed McConnells bill or are seen as vulnerable in 2018 targeted by PDA. The other senators are Alaskas Lisa Murkowski, West Virginias Shelley Capito and Nevadas Dean Heller, who all would see draconian cuts to health care safety nets in their states.

PDA is one of many groups urging members to contact their senators. They have phone and letter-writing tools on their Facebook page. Others, like ActionNetwork.org, seeks volunteers for sit-ins at Senate offices on Thursday, July 6. While other Trump protests are planned, stopping McConnells health care bill is the most immediate priority.

AllOfUs, Democracy Spring, Democratic Socialists of America, Our Revolution, and The Peoples Consortium are working together to organize, coordinate, and support sit-ins at Senate offices across the country on Thursday, July 6th, ActionNetworks website said. We will target as many Republican Senators as possible with a common demand that they vote NO on the Better Care Reconciliation Act.

The Indivisible Project has launched TrumpCareTen.org, which targets GOP senators in 10 states. In addition to the states and senators named by PDA, theyre looking at Alaskas Dan Collins, Maines Susan Collins, Colorados Cory Gardner, Ohios Rob Portman, Pennsylvanias Pat Toomey, Louisianas Bill Cassidy and Arkansas Tom Cotton. Its site has brief sketches of each senators positions, scripts to call specific senators and other ones encouraging Democrats to stop all Senate business until McConnell relents.

Every day, Indivisible will post daily calls scripts to use on your calls to the 11 Senators in 10 key states focusing in on specific topics that must be addressed in the Senates work. Check back here and spread the word, they said.McConnells delay does not mean the bill is dead; it means this recess will determine whether the bill dies once and for all or lives to see another day.

Indivisibles site also had an interactive state-by-state map that gives callers specifics about how the Senate bill would raise premiums in each state, how many people would lose private insurance, employer-provided healthcare or coverage through Medicaid. It explains that callers to Senate offices need to speak knowledgeably to Senate staffers, because those conversations from home-state callers are noted and tallied.

Find out how much premiums would increase and how many people would lose health coverage in your state under TrumpCare then contact the Senate staffers handling health care for your Senators and tell them to vote NO on TrumpCare, their website said. As we said in the Guide, the person answering the phone when you call your member of Congress office will be a staff assistant or intern. You should always ask for the Senators legislative assistant who handles that particular issue for the Senator. In this case: health care. Often times, youll be put through to that persons voicemail. Leave one. And then use the information below to send a follow-up email.

What stopping the senate means

The stakes are enormous in the fight over the Senates bill. McConnells legislation is not merely fulfilling the GOPs promises for the past seven years to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA), known as Obamacare. The House and Senate have used that pledge to shoehorn in another longtime GOP goal, so-called federal entitlement reform, which, in this case, has meant cutting back the future funding of Medicaid by a quarter.

Each of these elements has very different implications. The Obamacare repeal provisions deregulate the health insurance marketplace. Congressional budget analysts have said it would leave the public paying less for premiums but far more for out of pocket costs due to escalating co-pays, deductibles and having insurance policies cover less than is now the case. As Drew Altman, president of the Kaiser Family Foundation, told NPR on Tuesday, GOP lawmakers are not concerned with cutting the same costs as the public.

The conservatives theyre focused on what the federal government spends on health care, reducing federal spending and cutting the federal budget and capping entitlement programs, he said. The American people are focused on something entirely different: their own health bills, their premiums, their deductibles, and their drug prices.

Altman said that the House and Senate bills do nothing to address pocketbook concerns of ordinary Americans. In fact, by deregulating insurance markets, he said the GOPs bills would make these costs take even bigger bites out of household spending.

The biggest change in health care today has been the steady rise in deductibles and other forms of cost sharing, Altman said. That change in insurance is probably a bigger change than the ACA, which has occurred under the radar screen while weve had this great debate about the ACA. And the biggest question in health care were not debating is how much cost sharing is too much.

Meanwhile, as the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday, the real impact of the GOPs decision to go after Medicaid (the government health plan for the poor and disabled) and mostly leave Medicare (the government plan for seniors) alone, pits the elderly against the poor. (The GOP bills still cut into Medicare, because Medicaid pays for nursing home care under that program.) But, as the Journal wrote, Bysingling out Medicaid, it would signal that the burden of cost containment will fall largely on the poor while sparing the elderly.

The deliberate undermining of healthcare for people with private insurance and lower income people on Medicaid tens of millions of whom are woman and children has left longtime Democratic lawmakers like Rep. John Lewis, D-GA, and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-CA, saying they have never seen a bill as cruel, heartless and backwards as the GOP health care proposals. To make matters even worse, the bills spending cuts would be given to the wealthiest Americans as tax relief.

Can you even believe what this does for wealthy people who can afford whatever they want with respect to healthcare? Feinstein said Tuesday. And all these children, five million of them [in California] that depend on Medi-Cal, or there is no health care My voice level goes up two octaves when I talk about it it makes me so upset.

I think its a shame and a disgrace that we are moving down this road, Lewis said on Monday, during a discussion with Sen. Corey Booker, D-NJ, on the Capitol steps that went viral. Telling the most vulnerable segment of society youre on your own.

Because of the Senates arcane rules and the procedural tactics that McConnell is using to push the bill through with a simple majority of 51 votes, no other Senate business can be taken up until the healthcare bill is passed or set aside.

This means that stopping the GOPs Obamacare-Medicaid-tax cut bill will could force the Republicans to work with Democrats going forward, as much as they have refused to do so thus far. On the other hand, if they pass it (and President Trump signs it), they will quickly move onto tax reform, where the GOP wants to give even more to the wealthy, leaving, as John Lewis said, the rest of America to fend for itself.

Thats why the protests this weekend and into early July will be pivotal as important as any seen since Trump and the current GOP-majority Congress too office.

See original here:
Progressives and Democrats make coast-to-coast protest push to finish off Trump's assault on health care - Salon

Mark Levin's new book, "Rediscovering Americanism," an assault on the media and progressives and a call for Americans to take back their country, debuts today at No. 1 on Amazon.

Showing the draw of the New York Times bestselling author and top syndicated radio host, his book is already on the way to becoming another big seller.

"My new book covers a lot of territory philosophy, history, economics, law, culture, etc. And I look deeply into what is meant by Americanism, republicanism, individualism, capitalism. What do we mean by natural law, unalienable rights, liberty, and property rights? From where do these principles come? Why are they important?" he told Secrets.

It follows in the path of his other books and the nation: Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto; Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America; The Liberty Amendments; and Plunder and Deceit.

Secrets reviewed "Rediscovering Americanism" last week and wrote:

In the book, Levin attacks the embrace by the media, politicians and academia of progressive promises of a "utopia" defined by the end of personal freedom and individuality.

He has a grim name for it: "The Final Outcome." Levin wrote, "They reject history's lessons and instead are absorbed with their own conceit and aggrandizement in the relentless pursuit of a diabolical project, the final outcome of which is an oppression of mind and soul."

Levin added, "the equality they envision but dare not honestly proclaim, is life on the hamster wheel, where one individual is indistinguishable from the next."

Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner's "Washington Secrets" columnist, can be contacted at pbedard@washingtonexaminer.com

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Mark Levin book condemning media, progressives, debuts No. 1 on Amazon - Washington Examiner

Two days before an assassination attempt on Republicans, the NRA posted a video on Facebook warning of leftist violence. Progressive journalists are now pretending political violence is the NRA's fault.

Barely two weeks after a progressive Democrat activist attempted a mass assassination of Republican officials, progressives are outraged at the NRA for noting that the Second Amendment gives people the right to defend themselves, with arms if necessary, from people who might try to assassinate them or their families.

You might not remember it because the news media pivoted away from the story as quickly as possible, but just two weeks ago an anti-Trump Bernie Bro tried to assassinate a bunch of elected Republican officials while they practiced for the annual bipartisan Congressional baseball game. Just days after the New York Times revealed that Republicans regularly practiced at a public park in Alexandria with minimal protective detail, the shooter showed up at the park and started surveilling it. According to the FBI, he even took pictures of the location. Before opening fire on the lawmakers, the shooter also confirmed that the assembled officials were Republicans.

Unsurprisingly, a lot of Republicans responded to the attempted massacre by noting that unconstitutional laws in D.C. actually prevented the Republican officials from carrying firearms for the purpose of self-defense (although the shooting was in Virginia, most lawmakers reside in D.C., meaning D.C. law effectively bans them from carrying anywhere in the area since they would eventually have to return to their homes with the firearms).

Progressives, however, are outraged at Second Amendment defenders for having the audacity to claim a right to self-defense in the wake of a mass assassination attempt. On Thursday, failed Baltimore mayoral candidate and Black Lives Matter gadfly Deray McKesson raged at Dana Loesch and accused her and the National Rifle Association (NRA) of white supremacy for noting in a prophetic promotional video filmed in April that progressive activists were becoming increasingly violent.

They use their media to assassinate real news. They use their schools to teach children that their president is another Hitler. And then they use their ex-president to endorse the resistance, Loesch states in the video. All to make them march, make them protest, make them scream racism and sexism and xenophobia, to smash windows, burn cars, shut down interstates and airports, bully and terrorize the law abiding until the only option left is for the police to do their jobs and stop the madness.

And when that happens, theyll use it as an excuse for the outrage, Loesch concludes. You can watch the full video here. Rather than undercutting Loeschs claim that progressives reflexively scream racism whenever anyone challenges them, McKesson only underscored her point by accusing her of being a white supremacist for pointing out violence committed by leftists.

On June 12, just two days before the progressive Democrat activist opened fire on GOP members of Congress and other innocent civilians just minding their own business, the NRA reposted the video on Facebook. That aroused the ire of Michael Goldfarb, a liberal journalist who writes for the Guardian, who took to his Facebook page to condemn the NRA.

This new NRA propaganda piece is the most disturbing video Ive seen, Goldfarb wrote in response to the June 12 NRA post on Facebook featuring the Loesch video. Not surprising but disturbing. Reinforces my despair that America is not going to get out of its mess without bloodshed.

Two days after that Facebook post by the NRA, a Democrat political activist tried to murder a park full of Republican politicians.

Judging by his Twitter and Facebook feeds, neither of which mentions the June 14 anti-GOP assassination attempt even a single time, Goldfarb appears to be unaware that bloodshed happened quite recently, that it wasnt perpetrated by the NRA, and that the shooter was a vocal progressive activist who loved Bernie Sanders and hated President Donald Trump. Goldfarb did, however, take time to attack Trump and his supporters, Vice President Mike Pence, GOPygmies, and British conservative Boris Johnson. He does not appear to have ever condemned the June 14 shooter who nearly killed Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.)

Anne Applebaum, another liberal journalist and former member of the Washington Post editorial board, hopped onto Twitter and did her best to amplify Goldfarbs rage at the NRA for noting on Facebook, two days before an anti-Republican assassination attempt, that progressives were becoming increasingly violent and unhinged in their opposition to the Trump administration and the Republican Congress.

Like Goldfarb, Applebaum also appears to be under the misimpression that no major political violence occurred in the U.S. in recent weeks.

Rather than attempting to exploit what happened in Alexandria earlier this month, Dana Loesch and the NRA predicted it. And rather than acknowledging the reality of what happened, McKesson and Goldfarb and Applebaum chose instead to close their eyes and stick their fingers in their ears and scream at the NRA and its allies for pointing out the need to protect the right of self-defense in the wake of a politically motivated assassination attempt on Republicans. Projection in this case, progressives accusing people on the Right of plotting violence while completely ignoring excusing constant violence being perpetrated by the Left is one thing. But what we see in these examples isnt just projection. Its outright denial of reality. Its the Big Lie on steroids: dont just refuse to acknowledge one of the most heinous acts of political violence in recent memory, convict the other side for acts that havent even been committed.

The fact of the matter is that it wasnt the NRA that tried to murder a bunch of its political opponents. It wasnt the NRA that published the location and security details of its foes. It wasnt the NRA that surveilled a park and confirmed that everyone in it had the wrong politics before unloading on them. No, that was done by a progressive Democrat activist. All the NRA did was point out leftist violence and note that Americans have a God-given right, affirmed by the U.S. Constitution, to defend themselves and their loved ones from that very violence.

To Golfarb and Applebaum and McKesson, the NRAs crime wasnt committing or fomenting violence. The NRAs crime was refusing to let leftist violence go unnoticed.

Sean Davis is the co-founder of The Federalist.

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Progressive Journalists Are Outraged At The NRA For Pointing Out Leftist Violence - The Federalist